It's easy to spend a weekend building an elaborate automation that you use twice. These ten are different — they're the automations that quietly earn their keep every single day. Each one follows Home Assistant's trigger → condition → action pattern, which you can build entirely in the visual automation editor.
1. Lights on with motion, only after dark
Trigger: motion sensor detects movement. Condition: sun is below the horizon (or a specific time range). Action: turn on the light. This avoids the classic mistake of lights snapping on at noon every time you walk past a sensor.
2. Lights off after no motion for N minutes
Trigger: motion sensor reports "clear" and stays clear for, say, 10 minutes. Action: turn off the light. Pair this with automation #1 for a fully hands-off room like a hallway, bathroom, or closet.
3. Notify on a door left open
Trigger: door sensor opens. Condition: door is still open after 5 minutes. Action: send a mobile notification. Genuinely useful for garage doors and back doors that get left open by accident.
4. "Someone's home" presence-based unlock or welcome scene
Trigger: a phone (via the Home Assistant companion app's location tracking) arrives home. Action: turn on entryway lights, disarm an alarm panel, or set a "welcome" scene. This is one of the automations people notice the most once it's working.
5. "Last one out" — everyone leaves, house goes into away mode
Trigger: the last tracked phone leaves the home zone. Action: turn off lights left on, lower the thermostat, and arm any security sensors. This one alone can meaningfully cut energy waste from lights or heating left running by accident.
6. Morning routine on weekdays
Trigger: time-based, e.g. 6:45 AM. Condition: day of week is Monday–Friday. Action: gradually raise light brightness, start the coffee maker (if it's a smart plug), and read out the day's weather via a voice assistant. Skips weekends automatically.
7. Notify on low device battery
Trigger: a sensor's battery level drops below 20%. Action: send a single notification. Battery-powered Zigbee sensors are easy to forget about until they silently stop reporting — this catches it before that happens.
8. Alert on unusual water sensor activity
Trigger: a water leak sensor changes to "wet." Action: send an urgent notification (and, if you have a smart shutoff valve, close it automatically). This is one of the highest-value automations for preventing real property damage.
9. TV-based "movie mode" lighting
Trigger: a media player state changes to "playing" on the living room TV. Action: dim living room lights to a preset level. Trigger (paired): media player state changes to "paused" or "idle" → restore normal lighting.
10. Weekly automation health check
Trigger: time-based, once a week. Action: send yourself a notification summarizing any entities that have been "unavailable" for more than a day. This isn't flashy, but it's the automation that tells you when a battery-powered sensor has actually died versus just gone quiet — genuinely useful for catching problems before they matter.
Building these without writing YAML
All ten can be built entirely in Home Assistant's visual automation editor (Settings → Automations & Scenes → Create Automation) by choosing triggers, conditions, and actions from dropdown menus — no code required, though YAML mode is available if you prefer editing automations as text once you're comfortable.
Start with two or three of these rather than all ten at once. An automation you understand and trust is worth more than a dozen you set up in one weekend and never revisit.